Nearly four and a half years after a body was found in vineyards in Remerschen, a 49-year-old man has gone on trial accused of hiding his father's death and continuing to collect his pension.
The public prosecutor has requested an immediate prison sentence of two years and eight months. The charges are fraud and violating the integrity of a corpse.
On 25 December 2021, a male body was found in Remerschen, in a small wooded area among the vineyards, around 20 metres from a road. The body was only lightly clothed and had nothing on it that could help establish the man's identity. There was no wallet, no shoes, and not even dentures in his mouth.
According to the police investigator, everything appeared to have been done to prevent officers from tracing anything. Over the next two years, police followed various leads, but the man's identity remained unknown. All that was clear was that foul play could be ruled out as the cause of death. It was also clear, however, that the body must have been brought to the location.
It was only on 30 November 2023 that the decisive breakthrough came in the investigation. A police trainee had been asked to review open missing persons reports. During this process, it emerged that a missing persons report had been filed on 12 February 2022, around two months after the body had been found in Remerschen.
The report concerned the 82-year-old cousin of the defendant. When police contacted the defendant and questioned him about the missing man, he is said to have reacted unnaturally.
As the officers became suspicious, they requested a photo from the missing man's identity card and compared it with the body. After two years, the deceased man was finally identified as the defendant's cousin.
The defendant had been living with his partner, three children, an adult son, his father-in-law, and his cousin. More precisely, all of them were registered as living at his house.
The defendant had not worked since 2015, and his wife had also had to give up work shortly afterwards for health reasons. It was the cousin, who had a room in the house, whose pension had kept the family financially afloat.
On 11 December 2021, however, the defendant found his cousin dead in bed. At first, he turned down the heating and, over the following two weeks, continued to take food downstairs and switch the television on and off to make it look as though everything was normal. After that period, however, he realised he had to do something.
When the man died, the only thought going through his mind was how the family would survive, the defendant told the court on Monday afternoon. He said he had only been thinking about his children.
The defendant then wrapped his cousin's body in two large bags and took it to the vineyards in Remerschen. The family continued to collect the deceased man's pension, which was possible because the defendant had power of attorney over his account.
During the later investigation, it also emerged that the deceased was not in fact the defendant's cousin, but his father. This could explain why the man had financially supported the defendant during his lifetime.
The defendant was arrested on 28 November 2024. According to the investigator, he immediately began crying and confessed. The amount the defendant now has to repay to the National Pension Insurance Fund (CNAP) stands at €120,000.
The defendant's lawyer stressed that his client had wanted to protect his family by every means possible, as they had been living in social hardship. He said the defendant had acted in a state of panic. If the court were to impose a custodial sentence, the lawyer argued, it should be fully suspended.
The prosecutor, however, pointed out that the family had also used the money to go on holiday outside Europe twice. He also argued that the defendant had not shown genuine remorse. The prosecutor therefore requested an immediate prison sentence of two years and eight months, as well as an appropriate fine.
The lawyer for the civil party, representing the CNAP, stressed that an entire family had lived off the victim's back. He said the court should impose the harshest punishment on the defendant, namely forcing him to go to work. To this day, the defendant is still not employed.
During the trial, the 49-year-old defendant was asked several times by the presiding judge whether he wanted to say anything about the case. Each time, he refused. It was only at the very end, when the judge told him this was his final opportunity, that he replied that he would try.
The defendant said he had not done the right thing and that he could have thought about things very differently, but that this was not always easy for him. He said he would now try to find a job as quickly as possible in order to repay everything, and that he also wanted to register with national employment agency ADEM.
The judge asked him why he had taken the body to that specific location in Schengen. The defendant said he had not known the place. He added that his cousin had generally wanted nothing to do with anyone and had not wanted to be buried in a cemetery.
He said it had all been a huge mistake and that he had only been thinking about the financial side.
The verdict in the case will be delivered on 11 June.
